Tag: Issue No. 2 (2016)

Since I was a kid through my college years, I was always eager to go to school. I like learning, being exposed to different ways of thinking about things, and looking at life through the perspectives of those who have come before us. Sometimes history repeats itself and it becomes clear that we need to …

By Andrew Hetzel Earlier this year, I voted alongside fellow SCAA Board Members unanimously in favor of pursuing unification with SCAE. We recognize that such momentous change will not be easy. In return, the price of that effort promises a new world of benefits for our members. Yet, it wasn’t until weeks after this vote …

By Todd Arnette When we created Educational Pathways, in order to develop programs that would be relevant and useful to our community, we asked ourselves, “What are the skillsets our member companies in the industry expect and require of a given position?” Each discipline where we have a Pathway had the same basic requirement of …

By Molly Spencer The coffee industry had been established long before it was introduced to the academic world. The industry had mostly operated on empirical observations based on what worked and what didn’t work. However, in this day and age, the industry faces complex issues such as sustainability and environmental production challenges, the need for …

By William Garde In the winter of 2009, I was in South Africa with a missionary—little did I know the short trip we were about to take would change my career path. Piling into the Land Rover, we soon passed a sign that read “Zimbabwe.” Only ten years had passed since I had visited Zimbabwe, …

The Technical Standards Committee is one of the longest continuously functioning volunteer committees within the SCAA. Our responsibility is to conduct research to establish specialty coffee standards and determine industry best practice for publication on behalf of the Specialty Coffee Association of America. We serve the members of the SCAA and the coffee industry as …

By Christopher Hendon My interest in chemistry was sparked in 2007 when I received a copy of Luca Turin’s The Secret of Scent: Adventures in Perfume and the Science of Smell. Turin describes his pursuits of synthesizing novel, smelly molecules, and the challenge of elucidating how humans physically detect and perceive these compounds. Among other …

When did you start working in coffee? Was there a moment when you knew that you’d like to make a career out of it? I started working in the specialty coffee industry in 1996, after graduating from University with a degree in Painting & Drawing and a minor in World Comparative Literature with an emphasis on Folktales …